I just finished a three-part feature on this year’s biggest trends and developments at the Colorado Supreme Court. Many of the cases attorneys deemed important were expected, such as constitutional challenges to actions taken by the state legislature and governor.

I was a bit more surprised that a handful of family law cases I’d covered made the list. Only about 5% of divorces are settled in court, and far fewer are ever taken up by an appellate court. In addition, cases involving divorce and custody are often very fact-specific, and it’s hard to predict how many people will be affected by a given decision. So I wasn’t expecting these cases to pop up on attorneys’ “most watched” list.

Among the notable cases was a trio of common law marriage disputes, two of them involving same-sex couples who split before the U.S. Supreme Court made same-sex marriage the law of the land in 2015. The Colorado Supreme Court ended up revising its common law marriage test to better reflect modern relationships, no matter the genders of the parties involved.

Another important pair of cases dealt with the requirements for pre- and post-nuptial agreements in Colorado and the steps that must be taken to exclude assets or property from the marital estate.

I’m glad I was watching and reporting on these cases as they made their way through the court system, even if I didn’t fully appreciate their significance at the time.

(Photo: Kelly Sikkema)